Saturday, November 8, 2014

Experimenting...

It's been very quiet here on the blog. That usually signifies that real life is not so quiet. Indeed, life has been very busy lately and I haven't had any time to sew, let alone to blog.
Unfortunately, this situation is going to last a while. We're going to renovate the attic to create three bed rooms for our kids. Currently, it is used as our office, sewing room and storage space. We're in the middle of sorting stuff, getting rid of the things we don't need anymore (which is A LOT), and storing everything else -including my sewing necessities- elsewhere in the house.
I don't know how long it will take before I can set up my new sewing room. I guess at least a month or two. In the meantime, I'll resort to an other medium: knitting!

For my latest knitting project, I did a fun experiment in the kitchen. At least, Ithought it was fun! My husband did not!
I hand dyed some wool; using food coloring, vinegar and a microwave. As you can imagine, the latter combination was NOT appreciated by my husband! I must admit, it looked and smelled as if I was brewing some toxic concoction. At some point during my experiment there even was a small explosion in the microwave, covering its whole inside in blue spatters. But really, it was a super cool, simple and satisfying experiment.

There are a lot of tutorials on wool dyeing on the internet. Since they are all slightly different, I decided to wing it and follow the instructions loosely. I soaked the (pure wool) yarn, put it in a bowl with water, food coloring and a few spoons of vinegar, put the stuff in the microwave, and let it simmer for a few minutes, until the water looked quite clear (or, in one case, the stuff exploded - probably because I used too little water). Then I rinsed the yarn, and hung it out to dry. Only a few hours later, the first stitches of my new hat were on put on the needles...

8 comments:

Haha, mine did too. He is usually quite indifferent about my endeavours, but he voiced his disapproval quite loudly this time. I promised him to never do it again when is is at home (or coming home within the next few hours, for that matter!) Nevertheless, it was fun, and I will do it again, involving my kids in the process as well.

I wish you good luck for the renovation! We 've also looked at every stuff we had in our house. We got rid of a lot of stuff (and don't miss anything) for exchange of space in our house. A lot of work but the space we gained is great! Really funny experiment you did, I 'm curious about the result!

Thanks! Yes, I'm also looking forward to all the gained space. Our attic has a really nice atmosphere: it's very light and spacious. But over the years, it has become more and more crowded with stuff we didn't need elsewhere in the house. So I'm really happy to have it cleared out.

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About Me

Welcome to my blog!
I'm Saskia, scientist by day, seamstress by night. I live in the Netherlands and love to sew cool and comfortable clothes for my three kids. One day I might start sewing for myself too...